Adjectives and Adverbs in English - 5 Levels of Difficulty

Hi, I’m Liam. Welcome to Oxford  Online English! In this lesson,  

you can learn about using  adjectives and adverbs in English.  

You’ll see how to use different types of  adjectives or adverbs in an English sentence.

To see more free English lessons, visit our  website: Oxford Online English dot com. You  

can also book English classes with  our fully-qualified teachers, who can  

help you with your English speaking, writing,  IELTS preparation, or whatever else you need.

This is a ‘5 levels’ lesson. That  means you’ll see five sections.  

Each section will give you a challenge. Each  section is more difficult than the previous ones.

Level one is beginner, so if you’re not  a beginner, you should skip to level two.

Ready? Let’s go!

Look at five sentences. 

Each sentence contains one adjective, and one  adverb. Can you find them? Pause the video,  

and find the adjective and the  adverb in each sentence. Do it now! 

Ready? Let’s check. 

Adjectives often come before a noun,  as in ‘old town’ or ‘Italian bakery’.

Adjectives can also come after a noun, often  after a verb like ‘be’, as in ‘it was cloudy’.

You could also put an adjective after  a noun using other linking verbs,  

like ‘get’, ‘become’ or ‘look’.  For example: ‘It’s getting dark.’

Adjectives only do one thing: they describe  nouns. An adjective *always* links to a noun.

Adverbs can be harder to find,  because they do many different jobs.

Many adverbs end in -ly,  like ‘probably’ or ‘lightly’.  

However, many adverbs don’t,  like ‘well’ or ‘ever’.

Also, adverbs do many different jobs. They  can describe verbs, adjectives, or situations.

To use adjectives and adverbs well in English, you  should know how to recognise them in a sentence.

If that’s clear, then let’s move on to level two! 

Here’s your challenge for level two. 

Here, your job is to put the adjectives  and adverbs in the right places.

You can’t add any punctuation. That means there’s  only one possible answer for each sentence,  

except sentence five, where there’s  at least one more possibility.

Pause the video and think about it now! 

Could you do it? Let’s take a look. So, what do you need to know here?

There are rules for word order  for both adjectives and adverbs.

The rules for adjectives are simpler,  because adjectives always link to a noun.  

As you saw in level one, the  adjective either goes before the noun,  

or after the noun with a linking verb like ‘be’. Rules for adverbs are more complicated,  

because different kinds of adverbs  need to go in different positions.

Sometimes, an adjective and an  adverb can have the same form.  

For example, ‘enough’ can be  an adjective or an adverb.

If it’s an adjective, it goes before the  noun, as in: ‘We don’t have enough time.’ 

If it’s an adverb, it goes after the verb or verb  phrase. For example: ‘He didn’t run fast enough.’ 

This is a useful rule for adverb word order. If  an adverb describes a verb, then it normally goes  

after the verb or verb phrase. You can  see this in sentences two and three.

If this is confusing for you, you should  learn about the different types of adverb,  

and where to put them in a sentence.

It’s also important that you can tell the  difference between adjectives and adverbs.  

Remember that the same word,  like ‘fast’ or ‘enough’,  

could be an adjective or an adverb in  different sentences. You can’t tell just  

by looking at the word; you have to look at  the whole sentence and understand the meaning.

Now, let’s go to level three! 

Here are your sentences. Your job is simple:  

choose the correct word in each sentence.  Pause the video now and find your answers. 

Did you do it? Even if it’s difficult,  spend some time thinking about it.  

Take more time if you need! OK, let’s see the answers now.

Did you get the right answers? Is anything  confusing? Let’s see what’s going on here.

First point: not all adverbs end in  -ly, and sometimes, a word can have  

two forms – like ‘hard’ and ‘hardly’, or ‘direct’  and ‘directly’ – and *both* of them are adverbs.

In sentence one, ‘hard’ and ‘hardly’ are both  adverbs, but they have different meanings.  

Do you know what they mean? ‘Hardly’ means ‘almost never’.  

If you say ‘She hardly ever raises her voice’,  you mean that she almost never raises her voice.

‘Hard’ as an adverb means ‘intensely’.

What about ‘direct’ and ‘directly’?  Here, it’s slightly different.  

Both mean that you go somewhere without stopping,  but they’re used in different contexts. In most  

contexts, you say ‘directly’. For example: ‘I  walked directly over to him and told him to stop.’ 

But, if you’re talking about public  transport, then you use ‘direct’, without -ly.  

For example, if you take a train from  Berlin to Moscow without changing trains,  

then you can say you went  *direct* from Berlin to Moscow. 

In sentence three, is ‘sickly’  an adjective or an adverb? 

It’s an adjective. Adjectives can also end in -ly.  ‘Sick’ and ‘sickly’ are both adjectives, but they  

have different meanings. ‘Sick’ means ill, as  in: ‘I can’t come to work today. I feel sick.’ 

‘Sickly’ describes someone who is unhealthy and  who gets ill easily. For example: ‘She was a very  

sickly child. She seemed to get ill every month.’ In sentence four, ‘late’ is an adverb, meaning the  

opposite of ‘early’. ‘Lately’ is also an adverb,  but it means ‘recently’, and it doesn’t fit here. 

In sentence five, ‘flatly’ and  ‘straight’ are both adverbs.

What’s the point here? The most important thing  is that you can’t tell by looking at a word  

whether it’s an adjective or an adverb. Many  words can be both. Adjectives and adverbs  

can have the same form. Sometimes,  words which look like they should  

be related – like ‘hard’ and ‘hardly’ –  can have completely different meanings.

Don’t focus on the words; focus on  the sentences and what they mean.  

The same word in a different sentence  could have a completely different meaning.

Ready to move on? Remember that you can  always review a level if you need to. 

So, what’s happening here? Can you guess?

Do these sentences look right to you? They aren’t!  Each sentence has one mistake. The mistakes  

relate to adjective or adverb use. Your job  is to find the mistakes and correct them.  

Try to think about *why* these sentences  are wrong. Could you explain the problem? 

Anyway, pause the video now, and think  about your ideas. Take your time. 

OK? Let’s look together. 

In sentence one, ‘amazing’ is a strong adjective.  You can’t use ‘very’ with a strong adjective.  

You can use ‘really’ or  ‘absolutely’. So, you could also say  

‘It was an absolutely amazing experience.’ Do you know any other strong adjectives? 

There are many, but you could say adjectives  like ‘freezing’, ‘incredible’ or ‘delighted’.

In sentence two, if you have more  than one adjective before a noun,  

then the adjectives need  to go in a specific order.  

The most important rule to remember is  that adjectives which give an opinion  

go before adjectives which describe a fact.  That’s why ‘lovely’ needs to go before ‘small’.

In sentence three, there’s a  useful rule which you can use.  

If you’re deciding where an adverb  – like ‘sometimes’ – can go,  

and the verb has two parts – like ‘can be’ –  then the adverb *always* goes in the middle. 

In sentence four, can you explain the  problem? Let’s change the sentence a little. 

This sentence is fine. You don’t need to  add ‘people’ to make it correct. Why not?

Some adjectives can also be  used as nouns. ‘Egyptian’  

can be an adjective or a noun. ‘Spanish’ is  only an adjective, so it needs a noun after it.

With words for nationalities, words which end  in A-N can be used as adjectives or nouns:  

German, Russian, Australian, Brazilian, and  so on. There are a few other words which  

don’t fit this pattern, but can also be used as  adjectives or nouns, like ‘Greek’ or ‘Kazakh’.

So, you can say: ‘There are many  Greeks living in Australia.’ 

If you aren’t sure whether a word can be used as  a noun or not, then just add a noun afterwards.  

You can also say: ‘There are many Greek people  living in Australia.’ It’s totally correct. 

In sentence five, you have a compound adjective:  

‘two-year-old’, which is made  by combining other words.

Compound adjectives are often made with a number,  

like ‘a six-hour flight’ or ‘a  three-hundred-dollar ticket’.

If you make a compound adjective with a number,  

*don’t* add an -s to the other parts of  the adjective. It’s a common mistake.

Now, let’s look at the  hardest challenge: level five!

Level five will test everything you’ve  seen so far. Here are your sentences. 

Only one of these sentences is correct. Four  have problems – possibly just one mistake,  

or maybe more than one! Your job  is to find the correct sentence,  

and correct the mistakes in the other  four. Pause the video and do your best! 

Ready? How did you do? Which  sentence do you think is correct? 

Sentence two is correct; the  other four have problems.

Surprised? Some people might tell you that  sentence two is wrong, because you should use an  

adverb: ‘I’m doing well’. However, in colloquial  speech, it’s common to say ‘I’m doing good.’

What about the other four? Let’s look.

In sentence one, you should say:  ‘We went deep into the forest.’ 

‘Deep’ and ‘deeply’ are both adverbs,  

but if you’re talking about a  place, you can only use ‘deep’,  

meaning ‘far into’. ‘Deeply’ describes how you  do something. Here, you’re talking about a place,  

because you’re saying *where* you went, or, more  specifically, *how far* into the forest you went. 

In sentence three, you need to say  ‘a *lone* criminal’, not ‘alone’.

Some adjectives change form depending  on whether they’re used before  

or after the noun they describe. ‘Lone’  and ‘alone’ have the same meaning,  

but you can only use ‘lone’ before  a noun, and ‘alone’ after a noun. 

In sentence four, ‘rather’  cannot be used in this way.  

You could say ‘completely wrong’, ‘utterly wrong’  or ‘totally wrong’. There are other possibilities.

‘Rather’ expresses a medium level of something.  

For example, if you say ‘It’s rather  cold’, you mean that it’s ‘medium’ cold.

However, ‘wrong’ is *ungradable*. It’s a binary  idea: either something is wrong, or it isn’t.  

You can’t have different levels of wrong. 

Finally, in sentence five, the first problem  is with word order and adverb position.  

The second problem is that there’s a double  negative. ‘Hardly’ means ‘almost not’,  

so it includes a logical negative. You can’t  use ‘hardly’ and ‘didn’t’ together. The most  

likely correct sentence is: ‘Unfortunately,  they hardly prepared for their presentation,  

and unsurprisingly it was an utter disaster.’ There are other possible positions for the  

adverbs. For example, ‘unsurprisingly’  could go at the end of the sentence.

How did you do? Using adjectives  and adverbs correctly is complex,  

and there are many things you need to think  about to use this language to a high level.

If this lesson was hard for  you, don’t worry! In each level,  

we mention topics which you need to know to  understand the sentences and the exercises.  

Choose one or two topics, and work on  them. Don’t try to do everything at once!

That’s all. Thanks for watching!

See you next time!